Microsoft ZUNE Player

How have you found the marketplace? My brother has one, he works for Microsoft so of course he has one, and when I tried to access ChinesePOD podcast on the marketplace I could only get the free newbie lessons..

Thanks a1pi2 - It will be a couple of weeks before I try it out, simply because I'm not downloading new lessons at the moment (trying to work through some textbooks I have first).  But I look forward to trying to soon,

Hey, thanks for posting this. I'm not sure that much has changed on the ZUNE front from Microsoft in the past year.

I have a Zune 8 (second generation.) It syncs my podcast feed just fine and syncs to my device wirelessly. That part is quite nice. And the size/capacity/audio quality is amazing.

What I can't STAND is the fact that it doesn't support Chinese characters. The Zune HD supports Chinese characters but I don't want to upgrade. The Zune I have works well enough for me.

Sorry yours is giving you pain...

a1pi2, would you recommend your Zune 8 as a ChinesePod learning tool? Does it do everything you need it to do? 

Nope, I would NOT recommend the Zune 8 as a ChinesePod learning tool. It's a really good media player--it's small, has great audio, good battery life, etc., but it wasn't at all designed for use with CPod.  

If I were buying a media player primarily for CPod, I would not get a Zune. If I were buying a media player to use with a bunch of different podcasts (news, etc.), the Zune would be great. And if music was the most important thing for me, Zune would be absolutely unbeatable: it can find new music (through the Zune pass) and sends it wirelessly to my device. The Zune software's actually really nice compared to iTunes...and it will show CPod dialogs.

If you primarily want an audio player for CPod, get an iPod. CPod is designed to work best with iPod and iPod works really well with CPod.

a1pi2, hey thanks for that recommendation.  It might be the expensive iPod Touch after all.

Yeah...sorry that Zune can't do it : ) Especially sorry as a Microsoft employee and shareholder.

You know, Zune is a really, really great music player. It's light years above the competition if you happen to be exactly the person they target. But if you're not that person, it just doesn't cut it.

One day I'll write some software that makes Zune work better with CPod. It can't be that hard to make Zune think that each level is its own podcast...

Yeah, I remember reading a blog somewhere from someone who interviewed a Microsoft employee, and I get the impression that on the Mobile side of the equation, many Microsoft employees share your views. 

I did hear good things about Zune as a music player.  But I guess I want more than just a music player.  The good news if you're a MSFT employee is that the mobile universe is really fragmented, and with smartphones of all types and coolnesses, multiple gaming platforms, and management needs for the enterprise, the game is far from over.

My CPod files are organized by level on the zune - it can be done by using your personal URL podcast feed.  Just add a, say, UI to the end of your screenname by using editing your account info here at the CPod website, and that will result in a new address for your feed (since it is assigned based on screenname).  Now, download all your UI lessons.  Then, change your name to add an A at the end, download your advanced, M for media, etc.  Zune will treat each as a seperate podcast, and put it in its own folder, as it thinks the address for the feed difference means it is a different podcast.  No harm to changing your screenname here at CPod, it doesn't mess anything up.

Thats the reason my screenname isn't Timsls, but rather is TimslsM now.  I was too lazy to change it back after downloading the media lessons.

Hi light487,

Thanks for reminding me !

There is an option in the ZUNE software for "Subscribe to Podcasts".  But when you enter the Chinesepod URL, the software doesn't recognize it !

I heard from other users that this is the case for other podcasts too.

And so you have to manually download the podcasts to your computer and then sync it to your ZUNE player.

Wow...I hope your brother can resolve some of these issues.

Paul

Hmm, not entirely sure.  I'd think you could just transfer the files from one folder to the next in your zune directory, and the device would then just sync up whenever connected.  But I'm not sure.

Playing is easy - skip files, etc.  It remembers where you are as long as you haven't synced in the meantime, run out of batteries, or otherwise reset it.  So you can slowly crawl through playlists of 100 files.  Its also easy to tell it which files to sync to the dev ice, and which to just leave on your harddrive for awhile, etc.

I think the device is pretty intuitive.

Anyway, I have no basis for comparison as I've only ever tried a zune, and am not recomending it as the ideal device.  I got one as a present, so thats what I use.  Just offering a solution I found to get CPod organized on one.

Tim, what you're doing seems like a crazy lot of work. I wrote a tool this weekend that does it for you. If you have your Zune monitor a folder, it will sorts podcasts by their "album" metadata tag. This tag is always set to "show", "dialogue" or "Chinesepod.com Fix" by ChinesePod.

This program reads in an mp3 file and resets the "album" tag to the level: "Elementary", "Qing Wen", etc. It also shortens the name of the lesson from "Intermediate - Microsoft" to just "Microsoft".

I haven't tested it a lot, but it appears to work without messing up the files. (Zune drops the picture of the Chinese woman, but I can live with that...or figure out how to fix it.)

I also haven't done the work to script this. Ideally it should just download new lessons from your feed and stick them in a directory for the Zune to monitor.

If you want to give it a try, it's on my live spaces at http://apardoe.spaces.live.com. It's in the public folder as ZPod.zip.

a1pi2 - Thanks - I'm too cautious about downloading things to try it, but it sounds like a really good program, and I appreciate you making it available.

Your observation regarding it being alot of trouble is certainly correct, if you were keeping up with the new lessons and such.  It ends up being ok for me because I downloaded the archive by level, and won't update it but every 6 months or so, once a good chunk of new material has accumulated at each level.  But definitally would be difficult for someone keeping up with the recent lessons as they get released.

>> I'm too cautious about downloading things to try it

Hehe...that's a good policy! And it sounds like you don't really need this program if you're only doing it every six months or so. Amusingly, I could assure you that it's safe, but I'm really just some guy out there on the internet, aren't I?

I've been annoyed for a couple of years at the way the Zune files CPod lessons so I will certainly benefit from my efforts. This just gives me less incentive to do the "fit & finish" work make it easily usable by others.

(By the way...I'm really not just some guy on the internet. I've never hidden the fact that I work at Microsoft, and a quick Google search, er, Bing search will reveal who I am, what my job is and my boss' email address. I have way too much at stake to do something malicious! But it's still a good policy to be suspicious.)

tim

I use a couple of a1pi2's programs if that makes you feel any better. He has been around for quite some time, but then Im just another guy on the internet too.

Thanks guys, your comments have eliminated any concern I have.  I'll download the program once my regular computer is fixed (this saturday, the video card went bad), and use it next time I download lessons.  I really appreciate it.

Tim

Tim, I need to do some work on the program. I want to set it up to automatically monitor my feed and put lessons on my hard drive for Zune to find. I'll let you all know once I update it.

Happy Christmas!

OK, I had my fun and it's time for bed. It's now mostly automated. You supply your RSS feed URL and the target directory on the command line, and ZPod does the rest.

It's got bugs, but nothing that will hurt you. I'm messing up older files--I have lessons number 69 and 74 assigned to me right now (thanks, Crystal!) and neither of them are reading correctly. I'll fix that, but not today : ) It appears that Zune doesn't try to sync bad files so this doesn't harm anything.

Of course I understand if you don't use this until bugs are ironed out. I also want to make a real user interface--with a config file or something--so you don't have to run this from a batch file. If you wait, things will get better, but there's no (likely) no harm trying it out now. I'm running it on my machine and I have high confidence nothing will break.

ZPod is in my public folder at http://cid-cb841d691d9279ad.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/ZPod.zip 

so, timslsm, i'd download lessons as pretzellogici for all the intermediates, pretzellogicui as upper inter, pretzellogica for the advanced, and so on? I guess you're right, it works, but somehow, this seems like a hassle.  A small one, but a hassle.

Once the cpod files are in your folder, and the right folders, can you play them as necessary? skip lessons if need be? If you make a mistake, and put stuff in the wrong folder, is it easy to fix your mistake? When you do stuff wrong the first time because you just bought the device, is the device intuitive?